Willy Brandt, original name Herbert Ernst Karl Frahm
(born December 18, 1913, Lübeck, Germany—died October 8/9, 1992, Unkel, near Bonn), German statesman, leader of the German Social Democratic Party of Germany (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands, or SPD) from 1964 to 1987, and chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany from 1969 to 1974. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1971 for his efforts to achieve reconciliation between West Germany and the countries of the Soviet bloc.

Brandt passed his university entrance examination in 1932. A year later, however, when the Nazis came to power, his activities as a young Social Democrat brought him into conflict with the Gestapo, and he was forced to flee the country to escape arrest. It was at this time, while living in Norway and earning a living as a journalist, that he assumed the name Willy Brandt. When the Germans occupied Norway he escaped to Sweden, where he remained for the duration of World War II. After the war he returned to Germany as a Norwegian citizen and for a time was press attaché at the Norwegian mission in Berlin.

Pressed to return to politics, he became a German citizen again and, after a period as Berlin representative of the Social Democratic Party Executive Committee, was elected a member of the federal parliament in 1949. Eight years later he became the mayor of West Berlin (1957–66), a post in which he achieved world fame. He showed great moral courage when in 1958 the Soviet Union demanded that West Berlin be given the title of a demilitarized free city and especially when the Berlin Wall was built in 1961. He succeeded Erich Ollenhauer as chairman of the SPD in 1964 and campaigned for the office of chancellor of West Germany three times—in 1961, 1965, and 1969.

Brandt resigned in May 1974 after his close aide Günter Guillaume was unmasked as an East German spy. He remained the chairman of the SPD until 1987 and was also head of the Socialist International (the Social Democrats’ umbrella organization) from 1976 to 1992. From 1979 he also headed the Independent Commission on International Development Issues, known as the Brandt Commission, a prestigious independent panel that studied world economic policies.

Brandt received the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1971 for his continuing work toward reconciliation between West Germany and East Germany, Poland, and the Soviet Union. He wrote several books, including Willy Brandt in Exile: Essays, Reflections and Letters, 1933–1947, translated from the German by R.W. Last (1971), and People and Politics: The Years 1960–1975, translated by J.M. Brownjohn (1978). The latter comprises Brandt’s political memoirs.

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